The End of Coal? Coal Finance Report Card

Five years after Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, and the Sierra Club began issuing an annual coal finance report card, the long-term transition away from coal is seen as both inevitable and necessary by market observers and climate experts. This structural decline of coal is presaged by the shuttering of coal-fired power plants across the United States, and new policies aimed at transitioning other major economies away from coal. But with dwindling time left to limit global warming below the internationally-agreed-upon upper limit of two degrees Celsius, banks have not moved fast enough or acted boldly enough to transition away from coal before it’s too late.